


Crossroads

by theriacs



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F, Kalex Week, Red Daughter of Krypton, Seven Deadly Sins: Wrath, lifeforce shenanigans, okay so it’s technically not the week anymore but whatever i’m still doing it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-01
Updated: 2017-12-01
Packaged: 2019-02-08 23:07:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12874995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theriacs/pseuds/theriacs
Summary: Wrath looks like this:Blonde hair.Blue eyes.And a Red Lantern Ring.





	Crossroads

**Author's Note:**

> Minimized graphic descriptions of violence for those who may be squeamish. Keep in mind that a Red Lantern Ring chooses its bearer, doesn’t take no for an answer, generates and consumes rage in a perpetual cycle, and eventually blocks out all memories of the ring bearer’s former life.

When the dust settled and the ring anointed her, Kara lifted her head to face the four Worldkillers who had ripped yet another home away from her.

White hot anger filled the hollowness in her chest as the crimson ring on her finger glinted like a predator’s eyes in the night.

Supergirl was no more.

In her place was the living embodiment of every dark and destructive impulse Kara ever had, the ones that bellowed out the war cry of rage and thrashed violently against her chains. Her anger amplified by the ring, fueled by grief and loss, blazed over the lines she swore she would not cross.

The ravenous power of the Red Lantern ring consumed her entire being and spit her back out more beast than Kryptonian.

Kara snarled from where she crouched protectively over Alex’s prone body. Two sisters drenched in red, but only one remained standing amidst the rubble of decimated buildings. She could taste the sour copper of Alex’s blood, could hear the weak murmur of Alex’s heart over the roar of her own.

The four Worldkillers taunted and jeered, but Kara didn't let them finish. The fading rattle in Alex’s lungs pushed her over the edge.

She was an enraged streak of crimson in the air, a deadly omen hanging over their heads. Excess power crackled from her body to her surroundings, too much kinetic energy to focus through her veins. Her first punch connected with sonic boom and the second pounded the Worldkiller through the Earth’s mantle.

And again.

And again.

And again.

In that moment, the Worldkillers realized their undoing. Supergirl was a paragon of hope and mercy, fighting to protect the ones she loved.

This…thing, this fiendish being with savage fangs and blazing red eyes, would raze them off of the surface of the planet for taking that one human from her. The sheer power that radiated from her body intensified the atmospheric pressure surrounding them, making their limbs feel heavy and slow.

Still, they had the genius of Kryptonian genetic engineering on their side and there was more of them than there was of her.

Only a Worldkiller can kill another Worldkiller.

They were indestructible.

And Kara was _thrilled_.

The Worldkillers were undying targets for her never ending rage. No amount force she put into her savagery would kill them, so she could make them suffer all the pain she felt.

The Red Lantern ring on her middle finger churned her rage into power in a perpetual cycle, augmenting the already powerful effects of Earth’s yellow sun. It seemed that nothing of Supergirl remained as she took her revenge. When Alex’s last breath whispered its faint goodbye and left her body, it took Kara’s humanity with it.

Kara pockmarked the ground of National City with the Worldkillers, pummeling them over and over until rubble turned to dust under their heads. They begged for mercy, but Kara had none to give. They deserved this, all of them.

She snarled at their pleas, her eyes flashing and cleansing their tongues out with the light of Rao.

Where was their mercy when they stole Alex before her time?

Kara would bring them to meet their Kryptonian makers for taking her _Always_ away from her.

The ring took root in the deepest parts of her heart where love had gone to die, sealing the cracks of heartbreak with revenge.

Rivets of broken ground were scorched with her fury, as were any buildings or vehicles caught in her way. She was a destructive streak of black and crimson in the sky, bleeding out grief and loss. With her newfound power, the Worldkillers would know her suffering.

When they tried to escape, Kara ripped them out of the sky with a vicious roar, blistering hot chains from her ring barbed to catch under their skin.

And then she heard it.

A faint heartbeat.

A murmur.

Kara looked over from the carnage she wrought to the medical team surrounding Alex’s fallen body, her eyes widening in shock behind her Red Lantern mask.

 ** _But revenge_** , her ring whispered.

“I’ve got a pulse!”

 _ **They can't save her**_ , it insisted.

“Get her to triage, now!”

_**They’ll kill her again!** _

“Hang in there, Danvers!”

Kara staggered against the ring’s control of her. She gripped her head, trying to fight against its influence but she had already surrendered so much of herself to it.

“ _ **N—no!**_ ” She panted out haggardly. Kara turned her back on the Worldkillers, her blazing red eyes fixated on the way people were handling Alex’s limp body. The hands pumping down were cracking Alex’s ribs.

They were hurting her, didn't they know? They were losing more of her blood, couldn't they smell that?

“ _ **G—get away…**_ ” She forced one foot in front of the other, dipping in and out of lucidity. Shouts became increasingly alarmed as she neared them.

“Move, move! Get her out of here!”

The security team escorting the medics fell back to form a defensive line between Alex and Kara.

“Don't do this, Supergirl…” One of them warned. “Let them help Agent Danvers.”

But all Kara could see was them keeping her away from Alex.

“Easy...” They held their ground and gripped their rifles, knowing the guns would do nothing against her but it was all they had. The radiant and chipper Supergirl they once knew was a terrifying threat now, but they willing to bide for time with their lives if it meant getting their beloved team leader off of the battlefield.

Kara shuffled forward jerkily, growling a warning of her own. Steam gathered in wisps around her barred fangs where the air instantly vaporized with every heaving breath.

It was hard enough fighting the ring’s grip on her mind. She didn't need these two DEO agents in her way either. It would be so easy to tear right through them.

“Come on, Supergirl…” They couldn't back down. “They’re trying to help her. Let them save her.” It was a braver plea than either of them felt.

“ _ **Move.**_ ” Her voice was dangerous and raspy like a body dragged over gravel.

They did their best to hide their winces but what was most telling were the scared beats of their hearts. They irritated her. The sound of them was drowning out Alex’s thready pulse.

Kara snarled at their defiance, stalking forward more steadily with each deliberate step when the ring realized it could channel her anger through this too. She wanted to rip the agents apart and grind their bones to dust for standing in her way.

 _ **Kill them!**_ She heard shouting in her mind from the ring, more impulse than actual words.

Kara lunged at them with hands that could shred them like paper, but then—

“We’re losing her!”

Not again. No, not again.

They were killing her! They were killing Alex, why couldn't they see that? Their clumsy, primitive instruments were draining the life from Alex quicker than her body could endure!

“ _ **GET AWAY FROM HER!**_ ” Kara bellowed out furiously with fire in her eyes. She leapt over their heads, closing the distance in an instant before they even had the time to aim their guns at the anguished Kryptonian.

They scrambled away before Kara landed on top of them but didn't move too far in case they had the opportunity to pull their leader away from her.

Kara paid no attention to any of them, not even the Worldkillers who fled while she was distracted.

It pained her to even see the state Alex’s broken body was in. Her beloved sister, pierced and mangled because she refused to stand down from fighting by her side. Alex, whose faith in her never swayed, fell because Kara couldn't protect her this time.

It couldn't end like this.

Kara cupped Alex’s face with shaking hands.

They were supposed to have at least another fifty years together. Alex was supposed to live until she was old and gray, retired in her seaside cottage and wrapped in soft, cozy sweaters. They were supposed to have fifty more years of turkeys too burnt on Thanksgiving, quiet nights at home watching the stars on their birthdays, and stupid, terrible, cheesy Lifetime movies during Christmas.

Alex was supposed to find love, be happy, and raise a child. They had talked about this. They had _plans_. Kara had already decided she would be the aunt who loved Alex’s kid and spoiled them rotten. She was going to take her cape and turn it back into a blanket to wrap Alex’s baby in. All the love and sacrifice that Alex devoted was supposed to be _worth_ something in the end.

So, why? Why this?

Time and space twisted to bring them together. Had Kara’s pod never been knocked off course of trapped in the Phantom Zone, their lives would never have aligned. In every parallel universe she visited, there was always a version of them. She knew this. She checked. Why was hers the one world without Alex in it?

How many more times was she supposed to pay for the sins of her world?

It wasn’t fair.

Kara would reach down and tear Alex’s soul back into the land of the living with her bare hands if she had to.

Choking back a sob, she pressed her forehead to the weak murmur of Alex’s heart. Kara focused on that rather than the pounding in her own head, the beating war drum that marched through her veins. She could feel the insatiable beast rattling violently at the cage she trapped it in. It was only a matter of time before her mind was no longer her own.

One last time.

“P—please,” she begged through gritted teeth.

Let her be the hero Alex believed she was. One last time.

Kara laid her hand over the most grievous wound on Alex’s abdomen, right under the slick and torn kevlar weave, and filtered through the unbridled power surging through her like a relentless storm, fighting against the chaos conquering her mind. She reached blindly into its swirling depths while struggling to hold onto her tenuous grasp on reality.

It was a race against the corruption from the ring rapidly taking over her body.

“ _Hrrk—!_ ” She choked on her own blood welling up in the back of her throat as the Red Lantern ring squeezed out her heart. Kara turned to the side and spat out her tainted blood where it sizzled on the dirt.

Kara was running out of time.

She could hear the ring calling her.

Desperately, Kara pulled out everything good she could remember about herself, every moment Alex had ever looked at her with wide, devoted brown eyes—the bright spark in them of unconditional love—that motivated her, gathered the warm light of those moments she cherished so dearly.

She drew from the ancient power imprinted in her cells as the last standing matriarch of the House of El—before genetic engineering and the shackles of eugenic predestination, before child lotteries and birthing matrices, before compatibility calculators and societal programming—back to a time when Kryptonians were _free_ to love for the sake of loving and forged bonds unbreakable as they reached out and caressed each other with the holy light of Rao.

She pushed it all towards Alex’s flickering light before the ring could steal it away.

_“Alex!”_

The two of them glowed yellow and red of varying degrees as Kara transferred what remained of her lifeforce before it was corrupted.

It was a beautiful sight to behold.

They were a solar eclipse in motion, strands of light weaving around them as the ring cast its darkness over Kara. The more muted Kara’s aura became, the brighter Alex shone. The scales of life tipped back into Alex’s favor as the light healed Alex’s injuries, mending together all the lost and broken parts of her, filling Alex with all of their _would-be’s_ and _what-if’s_.

The brightness was blinding to her eyes, _**burning**_.

Kara staggered backwards with a reflexive snarl, her lip curling to bare her fangs. Her mind flickered between hurting the source of her pain and protecting Alex from herself.

Kara forced herself further away from Alex, away from the fearful and confused looks of her awestruck team. She growled at them, a warning that they had better not let Alex’s life slip through their fingers again, then flung herself into the air as far as she could as a jagged bolt of red lightning that cut through the sky.

It was the only solution she could think of before she lost her mind.

 _Like Myriad_ , she thought to herself as she punched through the atmosphere.

Only this time, there would be no Alex in a ship to save her.

**Author's Note:**

> Someone should tell Kara there are consequences to shoving so much of her lifeforce into someone.


End file.
